Daniel Boone

I was completely vegged out in Taos, New Mexico. To be vegged out in Taos, New Mexico, one must aspire to heights of laziness and laid-back-ness that transcend normal human levels of do-nothing-ness. My wife and I were unable to get out of bed and do all the hard work required to attend to society's minimum levels of expectations for public appearances, so we didn't even get maid service in the motel a couple of days.

By Sunday evening I was doing some school work, which meant lesson plans and grading papers, and I was listening to my wife express frustration at the Notre Dame football team's lousy performance against a superior USC team. I was poring over a lot of writing that my students had turned in lately, and one of the stories had some quotes worth mentioning. They were from Thomas' "Daniel Boone" story. The assignment? If you could go back in a time machine and meet a famous person in history, who would it be? What questions would you ask them? What would you, a person from the future, want to tell them that would be of interest to them? Here are some highlights from Thomas' "Daniel Boone" report. These are exact quotes. Thomas is a good speller; there are no misspelled words or punctuation errors.

"I would want to find out what life was like when Daniel Boone was adopted by Native Americans..............I would ask him how he made it through the gauntlet and what it was like running the gauntlet........... I would tell him that in the future we have a very different military. I would show him some ground beef and some ice cream."

Hmmm. Kit Carson is a local Taos hero, and the town has a museum honoring his life and accomplishments. I wonder if Kit Carson would be interested in ground beef and ice cream. I wonder if he had to run the gauntlet?